Which Sounds did you like or not like?

Mod Note: The previous thread seems to have had a corrupted database. Don't start any thread with 'love' in the the title! I'm rebooting it here:

Hey there, Titans.
My name is Rob "Revolution" Newton (a.k.a. blackjak from...well every other forum). I am the current Sound Design Lead for MWM and I have a question for you: What sounds did you love or hate in CoX, CO, DCUO or any other MMO?

I always liked the sound of Ninja Run, myself. And, yes, I too got tired of most of the Sound powers...(I really hope to get that particular thing fixed...).

Two things stick out for me though (in a bad way). This may come as a shocker to most, but I never liked the Blyde Square music. That bass line totally goes off time. I swear it does! And, I hate to say it, the torch sound bugged me. Maybe it was the shear number of instances on those steps, but the looping was very noticeable on them and they were actually a tad too loud.

So what do you guys think was good/bad? What are you looking forward to hearing (or not) in your city?

Lord Nightmare:

Atlas Park's introductory music will always be awesome to me, even though I'm redside. A thing I never really heard people complain about or praise was the flying "Swoooop!" whenever you started moving along with the "wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh" that went along as you move. CoH always had sound effects to go along with your movements while the competition makes you were as silent as can be as you move (..save for a few travel powers in Champs that have this annoying repetitive music that play over and over like Rainbow Flight).

Another thing I enjoyed was the actual powers and their sounds. You could really feel the strength behind Energy Blast abilities and the raw power of Super Strength. Even emotes got a nice addition (Smack!)

Now what do I look forward to seeing? More Emotes with Sound! :D And maybe some Wilhelm Screams from enemies that you send flying.

Don't know if you can do it but it would be a huge help to me if there was some facility to turn off or alter specific sound effects.

There were just some sounds in the game that would give me a splitting migraine, for example the constant humming sound of a peacebringer's bubble. There were other sounds that were just annoying to me, example, all female characters sounded like the were wearing wooden soled shoes.

Maybe it was because I wear extremely good headphones when I play.

It was possible in CoX to do it, with a little work. Even if a similar mechanism needed to be employed in CoT, as long as I can remove or change them I'd be happy. I'd hate to see this game launched and find out I can't play it because doing so gives me a migraine.

Thanks.

Roadkill

I like the idea, sounds like something I'll have to bring up with the coding team, seeing as I myself don't know how to implement that sort of system, but I totally understand =)

There is a thread in General Discussion asking about Sound design likes / dislikes, but the post is somehow bugged. I can post anywhere else but when I try to post to it the whole website bugs out and I havae to close / reopen my browser for the site to work again. Everything turns to 404 or Server Busy.

Many of the zone tunes were good. Some great. Some of them were quite uh .... meh.

Great ambience: One of the best 'murmer' tracks ever. Never noticed it was there until you hopped into an instance and it was gone.
Water Channels: Some of the best 'Doppler effects'. If you separated left / right, you could tell they watered one side of the track at times for effect. Audio location of where things were in the game was very well done.

Ambience part 2: Croatoa and the like, most specifically the instances there (witch / redcap hills) had an amazing quality to them. Audio and lighting combination really smacked of plopping you into a fantasy / fairyland. Better than most High Fantasy games pull off. The shock of transition from one type of world to another could be partially helping there but still...

Annoyed:
NPC power ups in the world. Example: Ever head to the portal buildings in Per. Island? Demons and Scientists and Mages Oh My! Flames, Shields, Buffs, and all manner of powers constantly going off. If nothing had been killed for a while it was deafening. Got to be a way to tone this down and still be well done. Perhaps combination of sound design and the devs working out an algorithm if so many NPC are within a certain distance... lower the volume per NPC type of thing?

LOOoong periods of silence: Some silence aside from wind / powers are needed, but the 'hum of the earth' so to speak was missing and a little unnerving at times if you know what I mean?

Mezmer / Psy: Loved the powers, couldn't play them for very long at a time because the sounds just grated on me. I could deal with most of the others and some were really awesome.

Sappers. Hated em. Oh yeah this is about Audio. LOL

Lots of other specifics if you want them, I have tons of audio chopping in my years so I'm a bit of a sound freak. Don't want to clutter up with nit-picking or jargon.

Absolutely can't wait to hear sounds of the game. Music, ambience, or otherwise. Like I said... sound freak. If you would like a sounding board please don't hesitate! :)

Take care,
Manny

Izzy
Izzy's picture

Maybe have an editable INI or XML?
effect 1 = sound file 1.ogg

Now.. if we could only do the same for Particle Effects for stuff like the Rikti Raids! :/

Sounds that I Wish Had Been There
-Ambient speaking (does not have to be coherent, nor constant, just muffled sounds of live voices in the background to set the scene when entering a crowded locale)
-SFX for active costume pieces, such as Rocket Boots and Piston Boots
-A low level (but noticeable) wing flapping sound for Wings

I never really found Sonic Blast/Resonance that obnoxious, but I know I am in the minority. As an alternative, might I suggest something along the lines of what they used for Shriek's sonic blasts in the Batman Beyond animated series? (An example clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znqCZr_BT4) I always thought those were great.

don't like looping sounds. >.> have a crowd and that one person that decides to cast an AoE bubble. Then all you can hear is that bubble sound. aggrivating.

yea i also would like some ambient speaking. like SimCity when you click on a building. You hear interior sounds and non coherent talking. Doesn't have to be all over the place. But if ya walk into City Hall would be nice to hear a few ambient voices that kind of echo due to the large space in there. Or the hushed speaking in a library.

I loved the sounds and the music in CoH. The music was atmospheric without being overpowering and most of the sound effects seemed as if great care was taken choosing them, like the "thwip" of arrows, the crackle of electricity and the boom of thunder.
They couldn't all be good, though.
With the exception of Scream and maybe Howl from the sonic blast set, , I found almost all of the sounds associated with the sonic sets jarring . They just sounded like they were done on a cheap synthesizer with lots of reverb. I especially hated the sound of the sonic buffs that you cast on your teammates.
The sounds with the electric control set seemed a little hastily chosen as well.

The taunt annoyed me. The........single ......taunt,
Could there be several sayings that it could run though? Get back here! Hey! Hey punk! Hey yaaaaaaa! lol j/k but you know what i mean
Not looking for the pledge of allegiance just some variation
and maybe a way to alter the sound of it: a pitch selector and /or a clean voice, gritty voice selector
different sayings from male toons than what females would have?
And oddly placed music. The sewers had Pocket D music playing sometimes. It seemed out of place IMO
Voiceless cut scenes.... ITF and others. If you are going to create trademark characters I think adding a voice to cut scenes would add, again just my opinion

One thing that had me turning off game sounds were the high-pitched sounds, especially the ones that repeated. I have above average hearing, and those odd, sometimes very dissonant chords/single notes were painfully piercing.

For some reason, the hint of drums that followed the Totem guys from the Banished Pantheon around was one of my faves. I also really liked the ghost-y sounds the low level CoT ghosts made, including their howl when you defeated one of them. The cast-sound of a force field was nice. Nothing else pops into my head right now. Most of the sounds were just fine for what they were supposed to be and few of them were duds I feel.

—

___
"What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous." - Joseph Conrad
“The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms” - Muriel RukeyserComposition Team

The two sounds I turned to silence were the whine in the PB powers and the constant looping grating higher end of the Portals - at which we had to stand waiting for the rest of the team to finish enh shopping or whatever. I'm an average computer user; I don't generally want to go rooting around in anything remotely resembling code, but those two sounds I got in there and changed.

Like others have said, I really enjoyed a lot of the zone themes, Founders and Croatoa especially! The sounds for the Water power set were terrific, and at least in once case hilarious - I don't remember what it was called, but one sounded like a power toilet flush; it was a pretty spiffy AoE as well and I had a great time using that as often as I could. The "phaser" sound of the Radiation sniper blast also v cool! :DDD

I don't think I "hated" any sounds in CoH, but then again I am the kind of person that doesn't even blink at nails on a chalkboard kind of sounds and can listen to the same song on a loop for an hour and not go crazy.

Going by sets, I loved the sounds from electric control and beam rifle. I've had the opportunity to play around with some high-voltage stuff, and the sounds from EC were dead on, I could almost smell the ozone they were so good. Beam Rifle's sounds were immensely satisfying, exactly what I wanted "beams" to sound like. Along the same lines, the snipe from Radiation Blast also had a great "beam-y" sound

On the negative:
The glowie sound could have had a higher frequency, I think the time between the swells made locating direction harder than it had to be.

Footfalls never sounded quite right to me. The timing was fine, but they always sounded off, like they should sound different.

—

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I never set anything on fire accidentally!

I don't know if this falls into "love" or "hate", but I was always bemused by the sound female characters made when running, like they were always wearing high heels.

I liked a lot of the sounds from the Pretorian enemies, like the laser blasts of the BMUs (is that what they were called? It's been so long...) shooting, or the PPD's energy gloves.

(And a lot of sounds I liked just because of the context. The sound of the Bots running was annoying to some, I know, but I always liked being able to tell when they were right behind me, ready to strike. And when I first played a Glacier in Champions Online, and heard the familiar Hurricane sound coming out of Snowstorm, I got depressed at the loss of CoH all over again)

There were a lot of stock sound effects in CoH's library, and I actually really liked that. It was even more like I was playing a character right out of the Saturday Morning cartoons I'd loved as a kid.

I don't know if this falls into "love" or "hate", but I was always bemused by the sound female characters made when running, like they were always wearing high heels.

Oh say, that reminds me - I actually liked the voice-acting for the female version of taunt. She sounded exactly as I think she should have, sharp, baiting, just really all-round awesomely cool and confident. In comparison, I found the male version to be too "dumb brute" for my tastes, like a sound a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character might make, a really grunting, empty-headed sound. Like perhaps an only semi-sentient minotaur might make.

That said, otherwise I usually despise voice-acting in a game, what little of it I've been exposed to. If CoH had had it, I might have given up on it before it was cancelled.

—

___
"What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous." - Joseph Conrad
“The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms” - Muriel RukeyserComposition Team

Good
-All of War Mace
-All of Kinetics
-All of Titan Weapons
-Knockout Blow's "wind-up"

Needs work IMO
Street Justice - I always thought that it should mimic the sound of a wrapped hand hitting a heavy bag.

Suggestions
-Add more THUMP to Energy Melee
-For Ice Blast, remove some of the "FLING", but add a little "SWOOSH" and more "CRACKLE"
-Add a bit more bass to Foot Stomp
-Electric Control needs a makeover
-Keep War Mace as it is, but more diversity is needed among it, Battle Axe and Broad Sword

I silenced the Portal Corporation portals, because they actually make me feel sick if I had to stand near them for too long. I silenced the Sonic set, too, because I found it unplayable without doing that.

Personally, I didn't mind the Demons roar, or the Spine aura pulse, but I can see why other people did. Generally, sounds that are going to be looping, or frequently repeating, should probably be more understated.

I LOVED the Claws sounds. I had two Elec armour scrappers, one Spines and one Claws, and in the end I retired the Spines version to another server because the Claws sounds were just so much more fun. The Fire Blast set sounds were generally satisfying, too, with the FOOM of Fireball, and the whoosh-woosh of Flares.

I think whatever the sounds are, it would be nice to have a way to silence them individually. There's always going to be some sounds that will unexpectedly give some people a migraine, or someone will find just really annoying. Even if it's only a case of naming sound files clearly and logically and making then accessible, so that someone can easily build a third-party app to replace them, that would be good.

—

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Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning

I silenced the Portal Corporation portals, because they actually make me feel sick if I had to stand near them for too long. I silenced the Sonic set, too, because I found it unplayable without doing that.

That reminds me, Though I had no problem with the sound the portal corp portals made it was WAY to loud. It could easily had its volume cut in half and it would have still been a big loud portal thingy.

—

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I never set anything on fire accidentally!

It wasn't the demon sounds I hated, it was the owners of the demons I hated...

—

___

"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until we are live!"
Warcabbit

For some reason, the hint of drums that followed the Totem guys from the Banished Pantheon around was one of my faves. I also really liked the ghost-y sounds the low level CoT ghosts made, including their howl when you defeated one of them. The cast-sound of a force field was nice. Nothing else pops into my head right now. Most of the sounds were just fine for what they were supposed to be and few of them were duds I feel.

I also loved the Banished Pantheon drumming, and the faint scream of the Carnies upon being defeated was also nice. I hated the WHSSHS-WSHSHSS-WSSHHHSS-WSHHSHHS of those fiery auras. The tactcis activation etc was a bit silly, I found, but not annoying.

Wasn't there police chatter to be heard near the donut shop in ... :( I can't remember. Earthquake zone...named after the hero who went meltdown, the one with the Psychochronotron..

id like if shoes actually made the sound of that type of shoe. based on the surface you are walking on.

Believe me, Steamtank, I'm all over that. =)

Clave Dark 5 wrote:

I found the male version to be too "dumb brute" for my tastes, like a sound a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character might make, a really grunting, empty-headed sound. Like perhaps an only semi-sentient minotaur might make.

I agree, I passively got used to hearing it, but it sounded less like a taunt and more like a mentally handicapped big guy being fascinated by a shiny object.

syntaxerror37 wrote:

Going by sets, I loved the sounds from electric control and beam rifle. I've had the opportunity to play around with some high-voltage stuff, and the sounds from EC were dead on, I could almost smell the ozone they were so good. Beam Rifle's sounds were immensely satisfying, exactly what I wanted "beams" to sound like. Along the same lines, the snipe from Radiation Blast also had a great "beam-y" sound

Domination always made me chuckle with evil--I mean--delight, yes that's it--delight.
Kinetics was always amazing.
Sonics, I liked, but desperately needed variety.
The symphony of lasers from Bots must. not. change. Lasers GOOD.
Archery was decent, but lacked the 'dramatic' sounds of an arrow sailing through the air.
Electric Control gave a wonderfully different take on the build up of electricity.
Electric Blast/melee/assault could have been more 'thunderous'.
Tough's 'tarzan yell' needs to go. You have NO idea how much I was looking forward to i24. (*sigh* works as an emote, I suppose.)

I didn't much care for the same old sound that came with Super Speed. It was too "Atomic batteries to power"; needed something more subtle.
Short duration utility powers wore me out pretty quickly:
Hasten
Boost Range

—

The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.

good:
just thinking about some of the zone backing tracks brings a tear to mine eye, but only played when you entered ?
It was a small thing, but I really missed the "enter game" zing when they changed it.

bad:
any persistant aura sound, ice sommat cloud was my bane - ended up playing that guy with the sound off.

While I'm thinking of it, I know you are planning on giving us lots of customization for the powers, but sound is a large part of how a power "feels".
my theory is they would sound quite diffrent depending how they are generated.
Not trying to make too much work, so minimal options to start with, but I think it would be awesome if you not only customised the look of powers, but could also select:
"sound 1", "sound 2" or "off"

Not expecting custom sounds, because if you could upload them (and other players hear them) .... will get messy, and potentally no longer "teen"

Always loved the AP theme, as well as the discordant techno sound that started about halfway through the Dockside music. I know many people turned off the in-game music, but in 7 years I never tired of the neighbourhood themes.

Liked all the power sounds except the ones for Leadership, as mentioned above. Also agree with comments on the female "high heel" sound regardless of footwear.

Maybe it's just because I had a fondness for my grav/psi dom, but I always loved the two-stage sound for Wormhole: (1) Gather (2) Deposit. :-)

While I can understand why some people don't like looping sounds, I was saddened when they took away the persistent sound of my ice tank's toggles. (I especially missed the deep glacier-creaking one.) For those of us that would like an audio reminder that our toggles are still working, can we have an option to have a persistent mild background noise when appropriate -- while of course allowing people to turn this off?

It's all about Mind Control and Sonics. Martial Arts had a great weight to it, too. Atlas Park theme was beloved, as stated by many others, but I also adored pretty much all of the Going Rogue music, especially the main theme. It was beautifully sinister, yet triumphant, like the Imperial March.

Good to hear that such attention is being paid to this - to make the players feel super in the same way CoH did, you really need a perfect balance of mechanics, animation, and sound.

Keep 'em coming guys! Getting some good notes here. :) We haven't really touched on power sounds quite yet (at least not officially), but your comments on toggle powers are on point. A more muted sound for constant powers is the best way to go. They have bugged me before as well. We are hoping to diversify power sounds, but I know I hadn't thought of the ability to turn off power sounds individually (possibly via a menu or the tailor?), as well.

Can we get an option to toggle on/off some battle music when we enter combat? Maybe sell packages of 'battle music' in the future? Just my personal wish.

Two of my favorites were:
Energy Transfer
Suppression

Something that may need work:
Force Fields: great for teaming but fairly generic in sound. Unlike most attack powers where you felt the action, using bubbles felt passive. Is there a possibility to add deflection sounds to spice it up?

Also, it may be generic power/spell among MMOs but now after playing other games, CoH had the best Fireball. No other game quite got that whoosh and explosion right like City of Heroes.

Please keep in mind to me it was all a package deal that combined with great animation, excellent particle fx, hard hitting sound fx and a wonderful action/reaction combo with the mobs. That said, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts so I have a hard time divesting one element out of the experience.

I'm a big fan of volume sliders. Maybe general combat, background noise, my noises (noises I generate), other PC noises, and so on. Either with master/sub volume (I want power noises at 60% volume, except for sound noises at 50% of that, for example.

Possibly with two or three "template" settings. For example, one for hanging out chatting, or exploring the town, versus instance/street sweeping. At the very least, I'd want one for when ninjas are within five miles of my character and one for - wait... can there EVER be a time when my character isn't within five miles of a ninja? Never mind...

Gravity Control
All of the sounds for this powerset felt quite suitable, particularly for powers such as Lift and Wormhole.

Mind Control
I want to heap particular sound design praise onto Levitate (which duplicated Lift above), Confuse, Mass Hypnosis, Telekinesis and Mass Confusion for being especially well designed and executed. Mesmerize was "adequate" and the Domination/Total Domination sounds were "okay" and served their purpose. Terrify was too harsh for my tastes and I would have preferred something else instead.

Time Manipulation
This powerset had the benefit of being made "later" and thus received a goodly bit more "love" from sound development than many of the earlier sets. Totally awesome from beginning to end.

Empathy
My primary beef with the Empathy powerset was when people put Healing Aura on auto and just spammed it constantly. Then it became quite tiresome.

Storm Summoning
This set was just filled with all kinds of winning sound design. Even Gale sounded perfect for what it did, and of course Thunderstorm was just so perfectly spot on for what was happening in that cloud ball of hatred, including the ZOT! attack it would do.

Archery
Pretty much every archery attack power was missing the same thing from it ... bowstring twang. You'd get the sound of the arrows flying away, but you almost never heard the "twang" of the bowstring in the sounds. Another beef that I had with this set was that a lot of the powers (Ice Arrow, I'm looking at you) wasted more animation time than they really should have, resulting in a "I'm gonna stare at this arrow I'm about to shoot!" indulgences, which weren't necessarily the fault of sound per se, but sound had to match animation. There was also the characteristic ... I dunno what you'd call it ... sticky "click" sound of drawing an arrow at the front of every animation that was just, weird, that I suppose stood in for the "wood creak" you'd expect from bending a bow in when drawing it. In this respect, I think that WoW did a better job with their Bow sounds, which involves a "wood creak" when drawing the weapon, and a bowstring "twang" upon release. However this powerset was notable for one particular sound design decision in that it was a very QUIET powerset, particularly in relation to a great many others, which was overall was a very wise decision.

Dual Pistols
Another high performance standard set. Simply spinning your pistols around to make them click by toggling Swap Ammo was something that rarely got old when bored.

Ninjas
After listening to Robots clatter around, I can't tell you how much of a relief it was that Ninjas turned out to be such a SILENT set of powers! Also, the Train Ninjas and Kuji in Zen upgrade powers just sounded powerful and arcane in how they were handled. Smoke Flash was another stand out, despite the fact that you'd normally expect a "bomb" kind of explosive sound for something like that.

Martial Arts
Even though this was an early powerset, its sounds always endured as being wonderfully evocative in ways that sounded powerful. Not a bad sound in the bunch.

Dark Armor
Although I never played Dark Armor myself, I had friends who did, and I always hated the "technological" sound for this powerset. Plus, in the early days before sounds "quieted" if they looped, this powerset was practically deafening when you started stacking all the powers together. The joke was that there was no such thing a s "quiet" Dark Armor (let alone a stealthy one) because you could literally hear them coming from blocks away! Loud loud loud loud LOUD!

Super Reflexes
The nice thing about this powerset was that it was basically Set And Forget, and most often the only thing you heard out of it was the sound of Practiced Brawler on autofire, which actually became a reassuring thing to hear, followed by that fading thrumming noise.

Kinetic Melee
NASCAR Ninja jokes aside, I actually rather enjoyed the sound design for the Kinetic Melee powerset, since the sound "flowed" rather than merely impacting.

Energy Aura
This was another powerset that seemed to be decently well designed in terms of it sound.

Ice Armor
The freezing crackle sounds used in this powerset, along with the freezing winds sounds of many of its powers was always well designed I thought.

Ice Melee
Despite the lackluster performance of many of its powers when working in Mids' (Ice Sword and Greater Ice Sword I'm looking at you!), the sound design for this powerset was remarkably solid, especially for Ice Patch.

Arachnos Soldier and Crab Spider Soldier
Playing my Arachnos Soldier build, relying on the Arachnos Rifle, always felt wonderful to me. The sound of that rifle dumping out enough lead to make me stand ankle deep in brass was always such a comforting feeling. Grenade use ... everything was perfect. The Crab Spider sounds were just as distinctive, but oddly enough not as satisfying to hear, probably due to the fact that they were basically energy weapons being shot out of the backpack legs.

Peacebringer
The INCESSANT Peacebringer "whine" to nearly all the attack powers used in all forms got old FAST, and there really wasn't any way you could get away from them. Very distinctive, but also persistently annoying because they were overdone. The Dwarf Form always felt "massive" though because of how it "tromped" when walking and "grumbled" when idle. Heck if the Demons had used the "grumble" sound of the Dwarf instead of their obnoxiously loud howl, no one would have minded them as much.

Warshade
All around just BETTER than the Peacebringer from a sound design perspective. Orbiting Death was perhaps one of the coolest bits of sound made for any powerset, especially when coupled with its "fluffy" animation. Stygian Circle also gets special mention for good sound design that was always evocative of behaving like a Necromancer feasting on the souls of the defeated and slain.

Among the pool powers, the "ubiquitous" Hasten noise was just ... obnoxious. Agree with others that Superspeed had too much of a technological "hum" to it. Leadership Powers could have done without the "ta-ta-dah!" trumpets. Air Superiority was always a fun one to use though, and its sound design worked quite adequately.

—

Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I understand some people have phobias and whatnot, but if there are any guns used by either heroes or villains, playable or npc/mob... don't make them sound like slightly annoyed electric staplers.

Perhaps first person shooters have spoiled us a bit, but I can think of at least one recent AAA release mmo that had gunfire sounds which would have sounded infinitely better if dubbed over with gunfire sounds out of DOOM (the first one).

worth noting, CoX was "ok-ish" regarding gunfire sound effects (ok-ish meaning it was about on par with DOOM 1 in gunfire sounds... not exactly glowing praise, but better than some mmo's)

PS: I'd love the ability to set game music volume separately from other game sounds, so that it's easy to listen to my own soundtrack while playing, and still hear power animations, glowies, etc. those don't really interfere with listening to one's own music, but 2 music tracks fighting it out doesn't work ;)

this is probably a "goes without saying" design detail, but just making sure to throw it out there :)

In my time on CoX I played the following powersets:
Gravity Control
All of the sounds for this powerset felt quite suitable, particularly for powers such as Lift and Wormhole.
Mind Control
I want to heap particular sound design praise onto Levitate (which duplicated Lift above), Confuse, Mass Hypnosis, Telekinesis and Mass Confusion for being especially well designed and executed. Mesmerize was "adequate" and the Domination/Total Domination sounds were "okay" and served their purpose. Terrify was too harsh for my tastes and I would have preferred something else instead.
Kinetics
All of the sounds for this powerset were done well.
Time Manipulation
This powerset had the benefit of being made "later" and thus received a goodly bit more "love" from sound development than many of the earlier sets. Totally awesome from beginning to end.
Empathy
My primary beef with the Empathy powerset was when people put Healing Aura on auto and just spammed it constantly. Then it became quite tiresome.
Storm Summoning
This set was just filled with all kinds of winning sound design. Even Gale sounded perfect for what it did, and of course Thunderstorm was just so perfectly spot on for what was happening in that cloud ball of hatred, including the ZOT! attack it would do.
Archery
Pretty much every archery attack power was missing the same thing from it ... bowstring twang. You'd get the sound of the arrows flying away, but you almost never heard the "twang" of the bowstring in the sounds. Another beef that I had with this set was that a lot of the powers (Ice Arrow, I'm looking at you) wasted more animation time than they really should have, resulting in a "I'm gonna stare at this arrow I'm about to shoot!" indulgences, which weren't necessarily the fault of sound per se, but sound had to match animation. There was also the characteristic ... I dunno what you'd call it ... sticky "click" sound of drawing an arrow at the front of every animation that was just, weird, that I suppose stood in for the "wood creak" you'd expect from bending a bow in when drawing it. In this respect, I think that WoW did a better job with their Bow sounds, which involves a "wood creak" when drawing the weapon, and a bowstring "twang" upon release. However this powerset was notable for one particular sound design decision in that it was a very QUIET powerset, particularly in relation to a great many others, which was overall was a very wise decision.
Dual Pistols
Another high performance standard set. Simply spinning your pistols around to make them click by toggling Swap Ammo was something that rarely got old when bored.
Ninjas
After listening to Robots clatter around, I can't tell you how much of a relief it was that Ninjas turned out to be such a SILENT set of powers! Also, the Train Ninjas and Kuji in Zen upgrade powers just sounded powerful and arcane in how they were handled. Smoke Flash was another stand out, despite the fact that you'd normally expect a "bomb" kind of explosive sound for something like that.
Martial Arts
Even though this was an early powerset, its sounds always endured as being wonderfully evocative in ways that sounded powerful. Not a bad sound in the bunch.
Dark Armor
Although I never played Dark Armor myself, I had friends who did, and I always hated the "technological" sound for this powerset. Plus, in the early days before sounds "quieted" if they looped, this powerset was practically deafening when you started stacking all the powers together. The joke was that there was no such thing a s "quiet" Dark Armor (let alone a stealthy one) because you could literally hear them coming from blocks away! Loud loud loud loud LOUD!
Super Reflexes
The nice thing about this powerset was that it was basically Set And Forget, and most often the only thing you heard out of it was the sound of Practiced Brawler on autofire, which actually became a reassuring thing to hear, followed by that fading thrumming noise.
Kinetic Melee
NASCAR Ninja jokes aside, I actually rather enjoyed the sound design for the Kinetic Melee powerset, since the sound "flowed" rather than merely impacting.
Energy Aura
This was another powerset that seemed to be decently well designed in terms of it sound.
Ice Armor
The freezing crackle sounds used in this powerset, along with the freezing winds sounds of many of its powers was always well designed I thought.
Ice Melee
Despite the lackluster performance of many of its powers when working in Mids' (Ice Sword and Greater Ice Sword I'm looking at you!), the sound design for this powerset was remarkably solid, especially for Ice Patch.
Arachnos Soldier and Crab Spider Soldier
Playing my Arachnos Soldier build, relying on the Arachnos Rifle, always felt wonderful to me. The sound of that rifle dumping out enough lead to make me stand ankle deep in brass was always such a comforting feeling. Grenade use ... everything was perfect. The Crab Spider sounds were just as distinctive, but oddly enough not as satisfying to hear, probably due to the fact that they were basically energy weapons being shot out of the backpack legs.
Peacebringer
The INCESSANT Peacebringer "whine" to nearly all the attack powers used in all forms got old FAST, and there really wasn't any way you could get away from them. Very distinctive, but also persistently annoying because they were overdone. The Dwarf Form always felt "massive" though because of how it "tromped" when walking and "grumbled" when idle. Heck if the Demons had used the "grumble" sound of the Dwarf instead of their obnoxiously loud howl, no one would have minded them as much.
Warshade
All around just BETTER than the Peacebringer from a sound design perspective. Orbiting Death was perhaps one of the coolest bits of sound made for any powerset, especially when coupled with its "fluffy" animation. Stygian Circle also gets special mention for good sound design that was always evocative of behaving like a Necromancer feasting on the souls of the defeated and slain.
Among the pool powers, the "ubiquitous" Hasten noise was just ... obnoxious. Agree with others that Superspeed had too much of a technological "hum" to it. Leadership Powers could have done without the "ta-ta-dah!" trumpets. Air Superiority was always a fun one to use though, and its sound design worked quite adequately.

+1 to basically all here with emphasis on the Kinetics powerset, oh how I loved Fulcrum Shift on a full mob...**queue Homer Simpson's MMMmmMm, donut**. And Storm Summoning's...everything. Lightning Storm's Zap! was something I never got tired of.

Here's a thought for the Sound Department. What if looping sounds, particularly on Player Powersets, would Loop a couple of times and then fade (like City of Heroes did), but then have a low chance (I'm thinking like maybe 2% chance here) of intermittently (and randomly) playing at something like 30-50% volume later on down the line. That way, the sounds "refresh" and effectively change up their sound balance in a relatively "unplanned" sort of way so that they can be HEARD, but they don't necessarily IMPOSE upon the audio experience of that set of Powers? It would almost be kind of like giving the audio of your Powers an "idle animation" In Sound, where the sound of your Powers "does something different" (like an Idle Animation does visually), but it happens infrequently *enough* as to make it something Interesting rather than something Annoying.

How does that ... er ... sound? ^^;

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

What if looping sounds, particularly on Player Powersets, would Loop a couple of times and then fade (like City of Heroes did), but then have a low chance (I'm thinking like maybe 2% chance here) of intermittently (and randomly) playing at something like 30-50% volume later on down the line.

Interesting, but I think that a random resurgence of sound would make me think something power/combat-relevant had just occurred.

I think different people like different sounds.
My pet peaves were the Darkness Armor, and Icy Sounds.
It would help to have a general menu for sound effects.
That allowed you control the sounds of different sets.

One of the things I liked most about the City itself were the ambient sounds you could catch in certain locations in the city. The bowling alley in Talos Island, next to the Tech store. An Italian restaurant in Founders Falls. And the Mutant shop in Steel Canyon. If you stood near the doors of these places a sound loop of some kind of associated talking or walking or goings on would occur. It was usually just this low rumble of people and things happening to give you the effect that things were happening in the locations you were in. I really liked this aspect and was disappointed it didn't occur over more of the game.

But it's those kinds of sound effects that helped make the city feel alive. I hope they are paid attention to in this game as well.

Doing voices for foley work ... that's fine. But doing it for actual conversations and speech? No thanks. Just about the closest I'd want to get to "voice acting" in City of Titans is something like this TPN Voice Loop for the Newscaster.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I remember the sound of Prometheus Park in Atlas at night, http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//7/7b/AtlasPark_N_PrometheusPark.ogg while swimming in the lake there as a newbie. Once, while I was doing that, I had hasten on auto-execute and it fired off mid-way across the lake. That combination of sounds was epic and that moment sticks in my memory—and it didn't have anything to do with combat. The art/music/sound of a game can really make a difference.

Hospital and police drone areas were nicely appointed, soundwise.

I really liked Hasten as a chills-up-your-spine "I'm getting more powerful" sound effect. That animation and sound went well together.

Further, in terms of "I'm getting more powerful" sounds, I think Energy Absorption in the Ice Armor line was my favorite. Accompanied with a full blue bar and a massive defense boost standing in a crowd of thugs with ice shield toggles crackling all about me—wonderful. I loved purpling out that build so I would have perma-EA. Such a great feeling, and the sound was a big part of it.

I played my /Psy defender a ton, and I thought Psy had some nice visual effects but Telekinetic Blast was the standout sound effect in that bunch, like a couple dozen insanity bubbles whipping out like a psychic chain. The animation made it feel sort of like the character was dashing its hand swiftly over the strings on the inside of a piano, which is a nice cinematic, psychic sound effect, too.

Within Spines, I thought Quills was *terrifically* disgusting. Everything in that set was nice and gross-feeling, but turning on Quills was like becoming super-ultra-mega Pig-Pen, and that was hilarious and fun to RP, but also just plain fun to play.

I liked the sounds of the baseball bats the Hellions etc. would thunk us with early on—I felt like those had a certain high reality factor. Using real wooden objects for percussion in wooded zones is also a good idea. If there's a warmace-type powerset or aesthetic customization or whatever, I think that having wooden shillelagh, or steel pipe, or stone hammer type accompanying sounds would be nice.

I liked that the starter zones had a fifties "Adventures of Superman" feel to them and that the subsequent zones took us through more modern movies and eventually heavy metal, hiphop, etc. I like the idea of using older-style sound effects on the bad guys in the early zone(s).

That sound you'd hear just as you were starting a new hero and it first appeared in Atlas was great. And addictive.

As of right now, there are no plans for voice acting in the game. If there is any voice over done, it will probably only be in cutscenes. I think the majority of the community would rather not have voice acting. Even if we do, there is a lot of thought going into accessibility, which guarantees the good old speech bubbles (not to mention the whole comic superhero theme) and abilities to customize your experience to make it comfortable for you to play for hours on end.

As of right now, there are no plans for voice acting in the game. If there is any voice over done, it will probably only be in cutscenes. I think the majority of the community would rather not have voice acting. Even if we do, there is a lot of thought going into accessibility, which guarantees the good old speech bubbles (not to mention the whole comic superhero theme) and abilities to customize your experience to make it comfortable for you to play for hours on end.

I'm glad to hear about the speech bubbles. I know they can get in the way sometimes (if anyone remembers the starports in SWG where all the spammers would gather) but games that I've played that didn't use speech bubbles made me feel weirdly disconnected from the person I was speaking to if all I had was the chatbox.

I actually thought the Peacebringer sounds in and of themselves, in isolation, weren't that bad ... but when you started chain casting using them the incessant whining sounds just became overdone.

Now, an interesting option for the Sound People to decide for themselves would be ... do they want to have an alternate and/or an add on sound for things like critical hits and the like. Sort of like how Scrappers had critical hits, but Controllers had (baked into their powers) a random chance for a +1 Mag on their Mez effects ... that sort of thing. Specifically I'm thinking that doing something like this would allow something like a Peacebringer to have a reduced "nominal" set of sound FX for use of its powers, and only OCCASIONALLY be doing the "full suite" of sound FX for the powers on a somewhat randomized basis, instead of it being done on EVERY power activation the same way. Something to think about.

Another thing to consider for the Sound people would be the question of whether Powers that fire off projectile Particle FX should have the Sound FX associated with that attack remain "with" the caster (like a lot of the Peacebringer sounds did, especially in Nova Form), or if the "source" of those sound FX ought to "travel" to the target with the Particle FX that are being visually animated and displayed. Make sure that all of that works with Directional Stereophonics so that you can HEAR the direction of sounds and ...

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I tend to turn my sounds down quite a bit, since I have solid earphones and a great soundcard,and I selectively 'tune' out the sounds I don't like as long as they're only heard every now and then, so most ability activations didn't bother me. Some exceptions immediately spring to mind, though:
- the entire Sonic primary and secondary sets, especially the toggles and 'screams'
- the big bubble that pulsated as part of the Forcefield set
- Robot MM walking sounds, especially when they got stuck on terrain (it looped then)
- the Kinetics activation sound for Fulcrum shift and Siphon; although I think the FS one was actually changed in one of the early releases, pleople complained so much; that wa sright about the time, FS was stackable and Crystal Titans kills were super-farmable
- the Dark melee activation for the Dark Consumption and Dark Siphon; I herad them many many times and got used to it, but it was never enjoyable
- Hasten activation never bothered me so much, but I recall it was a big issue for most players I teamed with at one time

[edit] Did they ever fix the melee Weapon sounds to sound distinct from each other instead of all being well, macey. I recall the Hammer from Rock was lackluster, and the Axe set did not sound like an axe at all; I kept deleting my Axe tanks because the sounds sucked so bad.

Customisable sound options would be awesome; allowing for sound packs might be a bit much in terms of time/effort (not sure?), but certainly the option to turn a sound on/off, even at the very generic 'high level' for a set or to just be able to disable all loops or all activations would be sweet.

If you have to assign individual sounds to powers, it's probably easiest to include a 'no sound' option at the same time, and keep the execution as simple as possible. From a tech point of view, I imagine it's not that much more complex than allowing sound effects to have their own volume control, but what I know about sound tech you could fit on the back of a matchbox in 3-ft high letters. I'm just thinking in terms of code (used to be a developer; moved on to architecture/design since)

I am not interested in zones music. Why not some neighborhood ambient sounds instead. More real life stuff.

Ambient world sounds > zone musics any day of the week, although I occasionally enjoyed the epic quality of zone music. Talos was just painful though; I can't remember which song it was, but you went thought that area so often, the damn thing just stayed with you forever.

If you have any music-events out in the world, please keep them short and sweet so you leave us wanting more. Maybe as ways of introducing events and such, or when coming across a landmark for the first time in a day (not every time you visited it though)

I'd have to go back and thoroughly examine the powersets, but for now the first thing to come to mind that wasn't mentioned in this thread yet is that if our characters get a voice (which I'd love to have happen), we get to customize the voice. For example, having 10 or so samples from each gender (And being able to select either gender voice regardless of what gender you chose for your character. I've heard girls who sound like guys and guys who sound like girls in real life), and then upping or lowering the pitch.

What´s about the short pieces of Music in the zones?
Who like to hear short pieces of Music (30 - 100 seconds) and who wants medium Long Music tracks (2 -3 minutes)?

Personally, that was just about the only "sound" issue I had with CoH: I'm flying along, and out of nowhere this strangely short piece of music kicks in, and then ends just as quickly. I just didn't like music being glued to a particular small neighborhood, and only that neighborhood, while the rest of the zone was silent.

Also, the way every piece of music abruptly started at the beginning of the piece, at full volume. I think that music that represents a particular area should sort of fade in as you enter the area, and fade out as you leave, and as you leave one area and enter another, the first area's music fades out as the new area's music fades in. If you play WoW, listen to how the different musical pieces work and blend with each other as you move from one area to another.

I might be alone here, but I loved the neighbourhood music. Some more than others, but I liked having themes for an area.

You're not alone. I loved the various neighborhood music pieces, because they put me "in the mood" for that particular zone or area of that zone. They gave me a piece of Soundscape that I associated with the regions of the game.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

Maybe I should clarify what I meant - it was late and I was tired while typing my previous post. I liked the music, I simply disliked having music in only a few select places.

It's possible that there might have been a glitch on my end; I played the "Mac version", which was actually the Windows version running inside the Cider emulation wrapper, so maybe that created some odd behavior. But my experience with CoH's music was that there wasn't much of it. I heard no music whatsoever most of the time while traveling around a zone, and then the music for, say, Blyde Square would come blasting out of nowhere as soon as I crossed the invisible border of the neighborhood, and then would stop just as abruptly as soon as I crossed back out. Then it was silence again.

So what I would prefer is something like a zone-wide musical theme, with maybe differently-flavored themes in different sub-parts within the same zone so that you know you've moved into a different neighborhood.

Actually, that was normal behavior. There was however a slider in the Audio settings for the music so that you could dial it down and not get blasted. I preferred to set mine at around 60% for music. And I also played on the Mac client.

Any time you crossed the boundary into a new "neighborhood" on the zone map (inside a zone) prompted the music cue to play. The Fool's Gold District, which was one of the adjoining districts by Blyde Square, lacked a music cue, hence why moving into that neighborhood in Steel Canyon would terminate any music cue that was already playing ... because it would try to play the Fool's Gold Music cue, and it didn't exist.

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I felt most of the sounds were good, I mostly was bothered by a lot of blaster sounds honestly, some of them felt too early television sci fi horror and cheesy. Could probably take a few notes from DCUO on this one. Other than that though, melee and most other sounds were fine, with a few annoyances like the odd sounds peacebringer made.

Perhaps when choosing/obtaining new powers we can have a list of sounds and maybe even particle/color options if we decide to customize? Sort of like what coh kinda tried doing but did it half heartedly and what DCUO and champions online promised but never delivered.

As of right now, there are no plans for voice acting in the game. If there is any voice over done, it will probably only be in cutscenes. I think the majority of the community would rather not have voice acting. Even if we do, there is a lot of thought going into accessibility, which guarantees the good old speech bubbles (not to mention the whole comic superhero theme) and abilities to customize your experience to make it comfortable for you to play for hours on end.

Looong as the Mission Architect lets you add them if you want, I'd be perfectly fine... ;) What can I say? I need battle cries!

For me, some of the more annoying sounds in CoX were tied to specific powersets.

The peacebringers' endless whine was the worst. I used to play melee tanks a lot, and the noise (paired with peacebringers' ranged knockback often being used indiscriminately) made me dread to see peacebringers join a group.

The other seriously annoying sound effect was any toggle-power that had a repeating loop that didn't fade out. This was worst in the Auction House, where players would leave their spine-sprays clapping away.

I love to see and hear other folks' powers going off, but the suggestion to make the game-sound files editable seems to solve a lot of the potential problems without inconveniencing anyone. I noticed from going to several Hero-Cons that gamers in general include a high percentage of people that are hypersensitive to certain sounds. Let's make it easy for them to find and edit away the sounds that give them migraines!

id like if shoes actually made the sound of that type of shoe. based on the surface you are walking on.

Loosely connected to this, it would drive me up the wall that all of the pets in the Robotics primary would have footsteps that were clearly metal hitting pavement. Yes, this reinforced the 'feel' of them being robots, different from the other primaries' pets, but I find it hard to believe that -- particularly given the popularity of Dark Miasma as a secondary with the Shadow Fall stealth power -- that the bots wouldn't have rubber pads on their feet, both to damp the noise of walking and improve traction; it seems to me that being hidden by Shadow Fall doesn't do you a lot of good if your pets are clanking along loudly behind you, and the fact that no one would hear them stumping along felt wierd.

I hated the warble sound of some psi powers. I actually enjoyed the peace bringers sound, it sounded like some one was running their finger on the rim of a crystal glass.
The city zone music was ok,loved Atlas Park. Portal Corp was very annoying, the sound was too loud and made it where you couldn't hear anything else.

Now onto voice overs, it's not needed. I play Aion and I hate the voice over in that game, not only are 90 percent of the npc was rude they sounded like butch women or a stuck up guy. There is also some serous bugs that has been there since beta that they haven't fixed as of yet. In CoX I liked how the npcs didn't talk except in certain cut scenes. I don't mind the way DC universe does their voice over though it can get you killed in the pvp and SWOTR is too complicated would cost too much to do that and then if there bugs it would be hard to fix.

I would rather see the money spent on the character generator and powers and the sounds we fell in love with.

Remember when CoH had Doppler Effects to the sounds? I loved that! Also, Surround Sound support, when I was in a battle, I always knew where my buddy was even if he was behind me because of the positional sound effects. Why did they take those features out? Just one day, poof, gone. -I hope we can have both of those things in CoT.

-Something about the Electric Blast set always disappointed me in CoH. I was expecting like an electrocution sound, and then later some ear-splitting thunderclap sounds, but all you got with that set was like sssssss! Tsss! Ksssssss!

Remember when CoH had Doppler Effects to the sounds? I loved that! Also, Surround Sound support, when I was in a battle, I always knew where my buddy was even if he was behind me because of the positional sound effects. Why did they take those features out? Just one day, poof, gone. -I hope we can have both of those things in CoT.

-Something about the Electric Blast set always disappointed me in CoH. I was expecting like an electrocution sound, and then later some ear-splitting thunderclap sounds, but all you got with that set was like sssssss! Tsss! Ksssssss!

Harsh.

But true. (*remembers his all time favourite Dominator Elec/Elec...)

Needed more Palpatine 'Unlimited...POW-ERRRRRRR!'

Doppler effects and surround sound. Energy Torrent in the Hollows swizzing Trolls around. Good set of Head Phones on? Pure Star Wars in the Death Star trench.

Energy Torrent was my favourite. Liked the energy punch also.
All the Energy for blaster. Top banana. Same for the melee variant for Energy blappers. Loved the one for Energy Thrust.
Most of the melee smack sounds were spot on.
Ice I liked. Subtle. Elegant.
Liked the hasten power up.
Loved the Solar Flare 'crash' of the Dwarf or human form. A sense shattering stomp. Good stomp. Same for Radiant or Incandescent Strike.
Water power set? Some of their best work. Inspired.
The Dominator power button. 'The now you're going to get it...right you....' sound. POW-ER arrived sound. Top banana. Never did a button sound so good.

As for tanking...something I came 'late' to.

Taunt.

I liked the 'Arrrrrr...' (a bit cocky...but I liked it...) but not the 'Hurgh!' (Which sounded like someone being sick?)

The female version was either 'Ha hah!' or 'TRIBAL SCREAM!' I was down with that. But selectable 'taunt' sounds would be cool.

A bit of Ja Ja maybe? "Hey...yousa...!' Ok. Maybe not.

...and

As for annoying?

Ghosts. Cheap. Cheap. Sound.
Whine of PB powers. (My ears...for the love of G*d make it stop...)
Whine of SSpeed.
The 'sick' of the Vahz. Really? *looks.

...and the spines toggle QUILLS!!! Sssp...sssspuh....ssssp...sspuh...sspuh...over and over and over...while in the market room. Hey, you...yes. You. Turn the toggle off... Want to take this to the arena? I'll make you turn your toggle off the hard way...

Some/all of the coh sounds were a bit 'white noise' splodgy. Needed more bass on some of them. Eg Footstomp.

The sound quality overall needed more 'gloss.' More 'sub woofer base' quality (or to have that capable quality through a decent sound system.

Some of the more high pitched beam noises got on my nerves I also feel that some sounds didn't fit based on size. For instance the Clockworks all had the same clicking noise even though the knights and such were 10 times bigger then cogs were they still had the same tiny clicking. Also elasticity seemed to be lacking in the the cracking department.

Sounds that I Wish Had Been There
-Ambient speaking (does not have to be coherent, nor constant, just muffled sounds of live voices in the background to set the scene when entering a crowded locale)

Bizarrely, this actually existed in CoH, but mostly in places where it wasn't appropriate. For example, if you went to the Science store in Steel Canyon, there was a background murmur of voices as if there were a large number of people around when you were just outside the door, even though the only people around were the 5th Column/Council spawn across the street.

I tend to turn the music off after I've heard it once, but i DO like the theme change when you're facing a boss.

I wonder if there is some kind of non-musical theme change that can be used to add weight to the intensity of combat.

I also LOVE the sound of foot prints and other physical interactions. Hopefully this is surface sensitive (grass, hardwood floors, water, concrete, metal, etc) Once my wedge heels arrive I also hope they come with that oh so familiar "click" sound.

Remember when CoH had Doppler Effects to the sounds? I loved that! Also, Surround Sound support, when I was in a battle, I always knew where my buddy was even if he was behind me because of the positional sound effects.

Im not sure if it has been said or not, but for me the sound of one of the powers of Dark Armor from CoX drove me crazy. It was a kind of metallic buzzing sound...part of the reason I never leveled that power set.

Well, I was never too hip to the whole sonic power set at all. Yes, I know, it was based on , but it was such an annoying sound. Perhaps with powerset customization we can get different sound sets for powers as well. Like for the aformentioned sound set, a female character based on melodic singing.

As for what I loved, The Steel Canyon music will always be my favorite music in game. I really liked the stone attack animation sounds. They were spot on. the subtle nature of the flying "take off" just gave that power the extra umph that I enjoyed.

Best sound in the game: toilet flushes when walking past restrooms.
Worst: glowies. I don't fully understand why I found that sound so obnoxious; I just know my main reason for clicking glowies wasn't to complete objectives!

I agree, and I don't see much for alternative either; however, it'd be nice if it stopped if I was about 5' away...clicking on it.

I actually liked the dark sounds, and I really liked Night Fall, both for animation and for sound.
One improvement to animation could be more of a DBZ-type movement rather than lifting your arms and letting the attack fly (which is still cool)